It's also a parody of real pinup ads for tool company Ridgid from back in the day. And yes, they were just as unsubtle:
Yes, but doesn't the Blu-ray transfer still blur the "Rigid Tools" pinup in the sawmill, like the DVD version did? My point was that an unblurred image could be isolated from the print, and it would mesh better with the HD than a blowup from the laserdisc.
I don't mean to keep shifting the topic away from the sound mix, but from what I can tell, the Blu-ray color timing seems closER to the 70mm print I saw at American Cinematheque. That was Halloween 2010, but I still specifically remember being surprised that the print looked closer to the Blu-ray than I expected it would.
Make no mistake, the Blu doesn't truly replicate the look of the original photochemical timing. I remember the 70mm print having more green than I expected, but the modern transfers do seem to take it even farther with the green/cyan cast. The modern transfer is also too bright, especially in the midtone range, and we already know the contrast is blown out, but I was still surprised at how that 1984 print looked more like the newer transfers than I ever thought it would.
Someone in the UK has a Derann 16mm print; this digital camera recording of a projection is too dark, and makes it look more yellow than it actually is (I believe LPP tends yellow-green?), but when I white-balanced the title, it looked closer to the new transfers than the old ones. The campus doesn't look as drab and low-contrast as the 1999 transfer, that's for sure.
Yes, I do think a retiming project using the Blu-ray would be great, especially combined with these sound mixes. If only we could get in contact with this guy who has the 16mm print, it could make a great color reference...
If anyone wants to spend a hundred bucks, there's a 16mm scope print of Trail Mix-Up on eBay. It's not 35mm, but it could still yield a sharper (albeit grainier) image than the laserdisc.
Look for a one-frame phone number on the Toontown bathroom wall. It's supposedly under the "For a good time, call Allison Wonderland" graffiti. This is one that's been rumored, but nobody has ever come forth with visual proof of.
I wouldn't be surprised if the rumor turns out to B.S., but I always assumed that about Betty Boop's nipples and I was proven wrong there. (And as I said before, Disney did cut out Tim Allen's phone sex number joke from The Santa Clause after the original VHS and laserdisc, because "1-800-SPANK-ME" turned out to be a real number for a real phone sex hotline.)
Space Kaijuu said:
I got to watch Aliens in 70mm for a special screening. From everything I read, that one along with the original Terminator film were hard-matted. The 70mm print looked so much better than the Laserdisc release that was, at the time, the only way to get the extended version of the film but it had black matte bars along the edges since there wasn't enough picture information to take up the full 70mm film frame.
Yes, I do recall reading that both films were hard-matted. I've seen an original trailer for The Terminator projected open-matte, and I remember black bars on the top and bottom with fuzzy edges - I'm assuming that means the matting was done in-camera. (But amusingly, the animated lightning effects seem to have been shot using the entire Academy-ratio frame, because they extended out into the black areas, past the live action!)
The VHS release is the "premiere" version, from what I can tell. I assume the LD would be the same.
On the picture of the actual reels, those wraparound labels don't look modern. The info for reel 6 is shown, and it looks stamped on. It also looks like the ink has faded. And it says "Dolby Stereo" - I am assuming a 35mm print of the restoration would have Dolby Digital and possibly DTS?
As for color timing, Raiders could be like The Neverending Story, in that it more closely resembles the original color timing than previous releases, but is still problematic. There's an excerpt from a Derann print of TNES on Vimeo, and the color scheme resembles that of the U.S. BD, but like msycamore said about Raiders, there does seem to be a "broader spectrum" of color than the digitally graded BD. (The U.S. BD of TNES also has issues with crushed contrast that I assume weren't in the original timing either.)
Wow. I'm floored. An HD version of Ghostbusters without contrast blowout.
Together with the Back to the Future and Roger Rabbit threads, this is yet more proof that all these pre-BluRay HDTV rips need to be found and preserved.
Wow, I had no idea that scene was real. I knew about the other two, but I thought Betty Boop's nipples were just an urban legend. Apparently I was wrong.
Does the "For a good time, call Allison Wonderland" graffiti in the Toontown bathroom have that alleged one-frame subliminal phone number? Supposedly, it was Michael Eisner's phone number, but even if it wasn't, I'm assuming it was removed because it was a real number (like the 1-800-SPANK-ME dialogue that has been expunged from The Santa Clause since the late 90s).
I still wish the network TV version would surface, with the "son of a butthead" line.
Are you sure that French source is the unaltered version? The film was also altered on its original DVD release, but not the same way as on the 2-disc. Anybody got the original single-disc DVD for comparison?
When Baby Herman goes under the woman's skirt, you need to specifically look for him extending his middle finger. If that's not there, it's censored.
As for Jessica, the problem is that the lines delineating her underwear didn't really show up in the old video transfers, so it looked like she wasn't wearing any.
The "good" screenshots come from the Japanese network WOWOW. Notice the hardcoded Japanese subs on the other images in that AVSforum thread.
I don't know where you'd find that capture nowadays. If it was posted to Usenet, it was likely a long time ago; it's probably past the retention periods of the newsreaders, and it doesn't show up on Binsearch.
These pre-Blu HDTV rips need to be preserved, they must not be allowed to vanish into the mists of time, so I'd love to get my hands on this WOWOW rip someday. Maybe ask the guy who posted the images on that forum?
Re, the luminance issue: I don't think the issue is with the capture. Many video transfers in the 80s had boosted gamma (and possibly lower contrast). I'm not sure why - was it because of the lower dynamic range of analog video? Was it so they'd read better on analog CRTs?
Whatever the reason, that's just how the 80s video transfers of the Star Wars trilogy looked. It's how I remember them on my old VHS tapes - way too bright. Look at the TIE fighter attack, and how blatantly obvious the garbage mattes are.
Seeing the THX transfers for the first time in the 90s, they came off to me as a marked improvement over my old versions, and I think the fact that gamma/contrast wasn't pushed up played a significant part in my initial impressions.
I like your gamma adjustment. The '82 transfer always came off to me as muted and desaturated, but there is actually plenty of color in there, it was just washed out when the gamma was increased.
And to clarify, this is the image frank says is the "original":
I don't think he was the person who originally captured it.
Agreed on the 1080i HDTV. I'd love to see that.
The version HDNet Movies has shown more recently is sourced from the 2005 master, meaning it has all the flaws of the later DVD, including that green tint superimposed over Slimer.
Joral said:
Asaki said:
TServo2049 said:
I hope I explained it well enough; anybody else, feel free to add anything.
Still kind of weird that a lot of shots look worse in the retakes, but I skimmed down a little further, and Lady Jaye does look better.
Eh? Which retakes look worse?
I second that question. What do you mean, look worse? The retakes are on the top, the DVD versions are on the bottom.
Here's what happened.
The Rhino versions were remastered from the original 35mm negatives. The negatives were the versions originally sent to the U.S. from Japan, and sometimes there would be scenes with animation errors, coloring errors, or things which the American directors judged to need improvement. They would then order "retakes" of those scenes to fix the errors. However, these retakes were on separate pieces of film, and some of them were never edited into the master negatives. The retakes were instead cut into the episode after the film was transferred to videotape.
Rhino went back to the negatives for better image quality than the 1980s video masters, and consequently reintroduced errors and rejected takes. Sometimes, they tried to fix coloring errors by digitally repainting them, or did other digital tricks. Unfortunately, being done at SD resolution, they looked like crud and didn't really improve anything. Sometimes, they changed things that were on the final aired versions.
Eventually, Rhino's license expired, and a few years later, Hasbro re-licensed the Sunbow cartoons to Shout! Factory. For Transformers, they dug up the original broadcast masters to reinstate most of the retakes, but according to that site, it seems they just for G.I. Joe they just reused the Rhino remasters and synched them up with the original mono soundtracks.
Here's that site's review of Shout's Transformers season 1 DVD set, maybe it'll be more concise than my version: http://www.cartoonreviewsite.com/eds/ed7.html
I hope I explained it well enough; anybody else, feel free to add anything.
I too would be curious to see the original edited version from network TV. Later cable airings didn't use all of the alternate TV takes.
I know that the alternate Biff life "You caused 300 bucks damage to my car, you son of a butthead" was not there when TBS showed the movie in the 90s - it was just "You caused 300 bucks damage to my car, you son of a [muted]".
Does anybody have a tape of the original NBC broadcast from 1989?
It might be interesting to preserve the laserdisc transfer of Toy Story as well, since it was the only version of any Pixar movie sourced from a film interpositive.
Starting with the video release of A Bug's Life, all Pixar home video masters came directly from the digital files, and for the DVD release of Toy Story they went back and did a direct-digital version too. The VHS and LD are the only time a film-sourced version was released. Not a high priority, just would be interesting.
How about the true Academy-ratio version of Lady and the Tramp that was discussed earlier in the thread? The supposed 1.33:1 version on DVD was actually a pan-and-scanned fake. The real one was only on the 1998 VHS and laserdisc.
Williarob got back to me, turns out my account had vanished from the system. He was able to restore it.
A system crash wiped out all my browser cookies, and when I try to log back in, it says "Login failed". When I try to recover my password, it says my e-mail address doesn't exist in the system. What's going on? How do I get back into the blog?
michaelkirschner said:
Is anybody worried about Disney? As much as we are angry at George Lucas for screwing up Star Wars you do have to give him credit for not taking legal action against his fans. Now that a major corporation without its history based mostly on Star Wars has taken over I worry that Disney won't think twice before bringing the hammer down
Lucasfilm will remain basically autonomous, and I assume it will retain its own legal department with its own policies.
Lucas and his lawyers didn't ignore us out of magnanimity, they ignored us because in the larger scheme of things, we just don't matter that much. I don't think there's been a single studio crackdown on a fan edit since Superman II, and even then WB failed to suppress it because it spread to Usenet and BitTorrent. And that was what, 2005?
In short, I don't think the stakes have changed at all.
The "cut off your ear" line was only on the theatrical release and the soundtrack album.
There was also that line when Aladdin is trying to quiet Rajah down, the line people mistook as "take off your clothes". It was on the VHS and laserdisc, but it was altered in the Platinum DVD and I assume it's still altered on the Blu-ray?
Also, which issue of The Rescuers do you have, Andrea? The 1992 release or the 1999 one? There was that infamous nude centerfold in the apartment window, which only appeared on the initial pressings of the '99 version. It's more obscure than its VHS counterpart; according to someone on Home Theater Forum, the first Rescuers '99 LD pressing was recalled before street date. If the spine says "14793 AS", you have that version. If it says "17105 AS", you have the revised pressing.
IMO, the nude photo in The Rescuers isn't as high a priority as all this other stuff, I just thought I'd ask.
I dunno, I thought Fantasia had a kind of flat low-contrast look too. (Though IMO the bigger problem is the dull, denoised sound mix, but I already said that.)